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By Hugo Melo

SRK’s Involvement In Simandou

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SRK is working in collaboration with Rio Tinto on preparing a Mineral Resource Estimate of the Simandou Iron Ore project in Guinea, West Africa. The Simandou project, located in the southeast of Guinea, is widely believed to be one of the largest undeveloped iron ore projects in the world. The Simandou range stretches approximately 110km long and is the site of a number of exploration targets, the most advanced of which are the Pic de Fon and Oueleba projects. Pic de Fon and Oueleba are the current focus of the resource estimation, which is part of a pre-feasibility study due to be completed by Rio Tinto later in 2008.

Senior Consultant Howard Baker and Principal Consultant Bill Hatton visited the Simandou site in January 2008. They familiarized themselves with the geology and mineralization of Simandou and met with key personnel involved in the project. Following the site visit, five key members of the Rio Tinto geology and resource estimation team relocated to Cardiff to begin the estimation work at the SRK office.

An intense workload of interpretation and 3-dimensional modeling was split amongst the SRK/Rio Tinto team so that the estimation works, validation and reporting could be completed within a strict deadline.

The Pic de Fon and Oueleba projects have an approximate strike length of 7km each. The projects are separated by a 3km topographic low, believed to be fault related. Both Pic de Fon and Oueleba consist of an altered itabarite with a central and dominant altered core in excess of 65% Fe. The two projects are low in associated contaminants and potentially represent a relatively small portion of a potentially very large iron ore producing region.

In addition to the resource estimation work at Simandou, SRK (UK) is undertaking the geotechnical design of the open pits and waste dumps for the pre-feasibility study, following on from work carried out by SRK (Perth) at the conceptual study stage in 2006.

The six-member site and analysis team, led by Alice Jack, collected data from the site, and began analysis, based on the interim modeling and reporting submitted in May 2008, meeting the final deadline of July 2008.

The site is challenging with steep natural slopes, old landslips, major shears and everything from uncohesive ore through friable materials and sheared talc phyllites to massive banded hard rock.